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jmc

geometry senior

Problem

An isosceles trapezoid has legs of length 30 cm each, two diagonals of length 40 cm each and the longer base is 50 cm. What is the trapezoid's area in sq cm?
Solution
We can pick a diagonal and a leg of the trapezoid such that, along with the longer base, these lines form a triangle with sides of length 30, 40, and 50. This is a Pythagorean triple, so the triangle is a right triangle. It follows that the altitude to the longer base of the trapezoid is . This altitude is the same length as the height of the trapezoid.

We now look at the right triangle formed by this altitude, the adjacent leg of the trapezoid, and part of the longer base. These three sides form a right triangle, with hypotenuse of 30 and one leg (the altitude) of length 24. It follows that the other leg has length 18.

Because this is an isosceles trapezoid, we can now calculate the shorter base to have length . Therefore, the area of the trapezoid is .
Final answer
768